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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25870876">The Sad Old Gits Rent the Snug</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySwillmart/pseuds/LadySwillmart'>LadySwillmart</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XIV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Six-Legged Foals, Unappealing Substances, moot points</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:33:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,077</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25870876</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySwillmart/pseuds/LadySwillmart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly what it says in the title. Cid and Nero rent a snug at a bar and bicker for a little bit. I must confess that while this story definitely had a plot and a point at some point, at another point I completely forgot both point and plot and thus we are pointless, plotless, and yes, unfortunately unfinished forever, sort of like a second-rate fanfic version of La Sagrada Familia. If leaving naught but the sinuous skeleton of architectural nonsense is good enough for Gaudi, it's good enough for Swilly and hopefully it's good enough for you too.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Sad Old Gits Rent the Snug</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Though while we are on the subject of unusual occurrences of some portent*, there tends to be an unusual corollary where the most portentous tidings are portended by the least conspicuous (but no less unusual) occurrences. To describe this principle in action, we would first describe an example of the converse, in which the foaling of a “six-legger” to the Dataq tribe of the Azim Steppe—famous for its nigh-religious adulation to those of the equine variety—portends nothing more than fair-to-middling weather for the impending spring, as well as a subtle reminder to not camp downstream from any more Garlean chemical experimentation facilities.</p>
<p>In other examples, the abnormality of the occurrence has naught to do with the genre of creature or the superfluity of its legs, rather its choice of company. Ants fiddling with grasshoppers, proverbial lions laying down with equally metonymical lambs, cats entertaining rats during a social dinner that does not feature any rodent on any part of the menu. All noteworthy things to notice, but nothing particularly portentous.</p>
<p>With that, we shall now introduce the <em>mise en place</em> for the most portentous tidings seen on Ul’dah’s Hustings Strip in recent memory: It was the sort of late spring evening where one can practically taste the melting, buttery orange honeysuckle air of a full-bodied summer. Within the recently renovated (and air-conditioned!) confines of the enclosed shopping arcade, highborn ladies and gentlemen fluttered to and fro in rinsed lawn or seersucker, laughing sensibly and lapping at sherbet. Orange, lime, or raspberry, or even all three colors marbled together that, while tasty, would—with the warm desert air being what it is: warm—eventually coalesce into an unappealing substance that frankly has no place in the aesthetic of this paragraph.</p>
<p>And although it boasted a convenient location between the Hustings Strip chemist and a dentist’s practice, <em>The Loch &amp; Cay</em> was not one of Ul’dah’s more prominent pubs. It lacked the homespun warmth of <em>The Sabotender Inn</em>, a family pub famous for its child-friendly menu with easily ejectable dishes. Its beverage list was hardly on par with that of <em>The Bullwark</em>, known across Eorzea for its state of the art beer engine and hand pumps, which, when operating at full pressure capacity, could extrude a jet of "Old Jenny" double donkey stout powerful enough to unseat a full-grown Roegadyn at 40 paces. It did not share <em>The Glass Onion</em>’s more powerful clientele, or even <em>The Duke of Hurl</em>’s more deleterious.</p>
<p>What <em>The Loch &amp; Cay</em> did have was Ul’dah’s cheapest snug, where for a small hourly consideration, one could sit and imbibe in an intimate nutshell nestled just above the pub entrance. It allowed the more private-minded to have a drink out of immediate eyesight of the bar’s nosier patrons. However, the old adage <em>You get what you pay for</em> is perhaps at its most honest in Ul’dah, and patrons could rest assured that they would end up paying for that discount sooner or later. This was specifically because the snug was a nutshell with windows, state-of-the-art, double-paned, mirror-tinted windows that had been installed the wrong way.</p>
<p>“These windows are rather hard to see through. Rather shiny,” observed the snug’s left-hand occupant, a Mr. Cid Garlond content to sip at his pint and do most of the listening.</p>
<p>It was, after all, why he was here—to hear.</p>
<p>“Right, to block out the desert sun, I reckon,” reckoned the snug’s right-hand occupant, a Mr. Nero Scaeva content to trace formless shapes around the rim of his sweating gimlet and do most of the talking.</p>
<p>It was, after all, why he was born—to hear himself talk.</p>
<p>“Oh obviously, they want people to spend money to rent their snug,” he continued, confidently. “This window has a fairly strong western exposure. It gets the full blaze of the afternoon with no trees to cool the view. What else to do but shade the glass?”</p>
<p>“Even if that was the case, Nero, would we still not be able to see the ball of the sun at least?”</p>
<p>“Well I’m sure it’s there, Garlondo. Not like the sun would just up and do a runner on good old Planet H. ‘Tis only long sunk behind that cobbler’s shop across the street.”</p>
<p>“But I don’t see a cobbler’s shop,” said Cid, attempting to squint through the window. “I don’t see much of anything but my own snout.”</p>
<p>“Then why would you try to make a point of telling me that you can’t see the sunset? Oh honestly!”</p>
<p>“What’s wrong with my point, eh?”</p>
<p>“It’s moot, Garlond.”</p>
<p>“<em>You’re</em> moot.”</p>
<p>“What ho!”</p>
<p>“By the by, whose round?”</p>
<p>“Not me, I’m more noodly, especially in the legs.”</p>
<p>“No.” Cid shook his head. “<em>Whose round</em>?”</p>
<p>“Ah. Yours I should think.”</p>
<p>“Mine?”</p>
<p>“Oh, is it? Well, off you go.” Nero waved, fingers wiggling happily towards the bar.</p>
<p>“Do you want to try that again?”</p>
<p>“No?”</p>
<p>Cid seethed. “Like hells! It’s your round and you know it!”</p>
<p>“Then why did you ask? Coo!”</p>
<p>The two gentlemen, still clad in their white flannels from a full day’s Failure to Sport, would bicker and coo in this manner through the dusk, not knowing that their combined presence was something comparable to the distinct bruise assumed by a clear sky shortly before a school of black hammerhead clouds billows up the horizon to water your freshly sprouted clotheslines.</p>
<p>The wrongly mounted snug windows left the pair in full view of all passersby outside, who knew by now that:</p>
<p>1.) Whenever Cid Garlond—the brilliant but famously reclusive engineer and philosopher—was in town, Some Issue of Some Consequence was on the agenda</p>
<p>And</p>
<p>2.) Whenever he willingly solicited the company of Nero Scaeva—the equally brilliant but famously flamboyant engineer and gadfly—that Some Issue was specifically one of Some Potentially Apocalyptic Consequences.</p>
<p>These two otherwise unassuming men had no idea how much credence they loaned to that previously described unusual corollary. If one were to take a Cid Garlond and Nero Scaeva package deal at face value, one would see contrasting cruets of oil and vinegar, the stout and spindly, the mellow and acerbic. Something a hapless waiter would abandon on your table with the expectation that you could somehow dress a green salad with this lot.</p>
<p>But yes, give them a good shake and it all works out marvellously, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>(* <em>One may safely assume that we are always on the subject of unusual occurrences of some portent.</em>)</p>
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